After reading yet another "why Linux is not ready for the desktop" article/discussion, I decided that, as someone who uses Linux exclusively at home, its about time I wrote my response to the attitudes expressed. I have been using Linux since January 1999 (Red Hat 5.2 off of a cover disc).

"Or you can use xkill. It's a little app that lets you click on a frozen app and kill it. It used to be on most distros menus, but has dissapeared off them lately. I think it looks like a little target, but have not used it in a long time."

If X is unresponsive or you're running a full-screen app like a game or media player, the GUI tools are often inaccessible. In Windows you can usually alt+tab out of a crashed app, or bring up the task manager with ctrl+alt+delete. But in Linux the CLI tools are often the only option, despite the availability of xkill and various graphical task managers.